This pixelated photograph from an early consumer digital camera might seem an odd inclusion. Babies have been stable subjects for photographs from the days of the Daguerreotype. By 1997 although not fully mainstream, digital cameras were starting to gain a foothold and this won’t have been the first digital photo of a baby by a long shot. But Time rightly recognised this as one of the most influential photographs ever taken. Continue reading A brief History of Photography by Objects – 5 – Photograph of Newborn Baby 1997
Tag Archives: History
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY OBJECTS – 4 – Fujica Camera ~1958
We leap forward by over a century and half. Our subject is a lowly simple viewfinder from Japan. But this is one of a new wave of innovative cameras in the late 1950’s offering automatic exposure. It also represents an early hint of the shifting dominance of the camera market in the coming decade. Continue reading A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY OBJECTS – 4 – Fujica Camera ~1958
A Brief History Of Photography By Objects – 3 – Chalk Drawing Circa 1800
It’s not the drawing or artist who created it that we’re after here. our subject is the man pictured. He is arguably the first person to create a photograph as we’d understand almost a quarter of century before the oldest surviving examples. Sadly like his photographs, he has faded into relative obscurity. Continue reading A Brief History Of Photography By Objects – 3 – Chalk Drawing Circa 1800
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY OBJECTS – 2 – Former Windmill 1700’s
Just a few streets away from where I live sits the subject of our focus today. But why is a former windmill in a small Scottish town listed ?
Well by 1836 it would have certain device installed in it. That device was a camera obscura which gave us the modern word ‘camera’. Continue reading A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY OBJECTS – 2 – Former Windmill 1700’s
A brief History of Photography by Objects – 1 – A self portrait of a Man 1839
This is my take on the history of photography from the earliest days to now. In slight hommage to Neil MacGregor’s seminal A History of the world in a 100 Objects, I’m going to do this by using actual objects that still exist in the world. We begin with the first self portrait (aka a selfie) Continue reading A brief History of Photography by Objects – 1 – A self portrait of a Man 1839
20th Century Photography in 10 (and a bit) People’s Cameras
,Although practical photography dates back almost 2 centuries for much of its early days it was in the hand of the inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. Then as now, we loved having our photo taken. But in the 19th century that meant a trip to a expensive professional photographer.
But that was radically to change at the start of the 20th Century which would move the camera rapidly from the hands of the “professional” into ours. Continue reading 20th Century Photography in 10 (and a bit) People’s Cameras
20th Century in Film by 9 Point & Shot Cameras
The last Century saw the rise of the average man as a photographer. We now think that we’re in era with mobile phone cameras of being ever-ready shooters but we forget that by 2000 most of us would carry some form of film camera to almost every leisure event we did. Point and shoot cameras (P&S) have little in the ways of user controls and just either fixed, basic scale/zone focus or later AF.
These 9 cameras for me chart the people’s choice of Cameras and not necessarily what are now deemed classics Continue reading 20th Century in Film by 9 Point & Shot Cameras